Slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. See our User Agreement and Privacy Policy.

Slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. See our Privacy Policy and User Agreement for details.

Avant garde art after 1945 (Selectivity)

1.
Avant-garde after 1945

2.
Abstract expressionism
• It developed between 1940 and 1960.
• It was a movement after WWII.
• After seeing the images and photographs of the
war, artists decided to explore colour and forms.
• American artists wanted to compete with the
European ones and now the World Art Centre
passed from Europe to the United States.
• In the avant-gardes developing in the US there
were many European refugees.

3.
Abstract expressionism
• Artists combined emotional intensity with the
individualism of expressionists and created an
art full of anti-figurative images.
• They can be divided into two groups:
– Action Painting and
– Colour Field and Hard-Edge.
• These movements found parallelism with other
European movements.

4.
Abstract expressionism
• Action Painting term was used for the first
time to refer to Jackson Pollock’s work.
• This artist, the same as Franz Kline or
Willem de Kooning, used his psyke as the
dynamic energy of his works.
• The canvas was considered as a field and
painting was something irrational,
instinctive, impulsive.

6.
Jackson Pollock
• He made works of
great format using the
“dripping” technique.
• In doing that kind of
works, he was
influenced by the
surrealists.

7.
Jackson Pollock
• He used to put the
canvas on the floor and
with a brush he started
dripping painting or,
sometimes, he could
throw the paint directly
from the container.
• The canvas was not in
tension.
• Huge formats required a
great control of the work.
Number 1

8.
Jackson Pollock
• These paintings
required certain
gestures and this is why
it is considered that
through dripping the
artist represented his
sensations and due to
this the name given to
this movement: abstract
expressionism.

9.
Jackson Pollock
• After 1950 he
changed his style to
begin doing figuration
in black and white in a
virtuous way.
• When he knew Peggy
Guggenheim this was
essential for his
career.
• He died in a car
crash.
Deepness
Ocean Grayness

10.
Colour Field and Hard Edge
• At the beginning of the 60s there were
two different trends in American
abstraction.
• Colour Field used big colourful
surfaces, without any other element that
could be distinguished by the eye.
• Colour was used without perspective,
giving the impression of enormity.
• The shades of the colours dissolved on
the canvas.

11.
Colour Field and Hard Edge
• Hard-Edge is the term coined to describe some
works in which atmospheres of colour are reinforced.
• The works have lines and limits well defined, to clarify
the compositions.
• The most representative artists of this movement are:
– Rothko,
– Barnet Newman,
– Ellsworth Kelly,
– Morris Louis,
– Kenneth Nolan.

14.
Mark Rothko
• American painter of
Russian origins
• Autodidact
• At the beginning he
did works connected
with social realism
• He received the
influence of
surrealism.

15.
Mark Rothko
• He based his inspiration
in primitive religions.
• His most representative
works are abstract: big
rectangles, without a
clear definition, with a
dark colour combined
with a light or vivid one.
The combination was
made to provoke feelings.
Number 10

16.
Mark Rothko
• The colour areas always
have non defined
contours and they are not
cut on the canvas.
• The main composition is
horizontal as long as lines
are concerned, and
vertical in the orientation
of the canvas.

17.
Mark Rothko
• In his works the horizon
line does not appear and
any reference to a
landscape is completely
eliminated.
• The colour areas
represent an atmosphere
that is not in contact with
reality and does not
depict any space.

19.
Pop Art
• It is a passive conception of social reality.
• It does not represent the creation of the popular
classes but their lack of creativity.
• The beginnings of this movement can be found
in the work of these authors:
– Rauschenberg and
– Jasper Johns,
who are considered as neo-Dadaist.
• Painting becomes again something that remains
something else.

21.
Pop Art
• The fact of taking a real thing and put it into a
painting is a way of manipulating reality.
• Being a urban art, images appear in the canvas
as in jail, acquiring a phantasmagoria image.
• These artists, the same as the Dadaist before,
take elements from reality and they incorporate
them into their works.
• In their work we can find glued things and
photos combined with painting.

22.
Pop Art
• The language is that of publicity: easy to be
understood.
• The most representative artist is Warhol and
in addition to him the following artists:
– Rosenquists, with elements of daily life;
– Tom Wesselman, he incorporates other elements,
creating installations;
– Roy Lichtenstein, he represents the world as a
comic;
– Claes Oldenburg, huge sculptures of daily objects;
– Christo, he wraps up buildings and natural
elements.

24.
Andy Warhol
• He made of art a
product of social
mass consumption
• He is not famous just
because he portrayed
myths but because
his work became a
myth for people.

25.
Andy Warhol
• He used techniques of
industrial production.
• He created “The Factory”
in which actions, films
and other ways of
expression were
organised.
• Consumption things
became the target of his
work.

26.
Andy Warhol
• He understood people
from the stardom at
the same level as
objects.
• He created series of
politicians and artists
and he treated them
in the same way.

27.
Andy Warhol
• He used serigraphy
techniques.
• He resourced to
brilliant and
fluorescent colours
even when he was
depicting dark
scenes.
• Many times repeated
series with
characters using
them as things.

28.
Minimalism
• Minimalism appeared in art in the 1950s and it
developed in the following two decades.
• It is a term to describe painting and sculpture
when there are characterised by their simplicity
in both content and form, and they lack of any
sign of personal expression.
• Minimalism aims at the spectator feeling their
work in an intense way, without distracters such
as composition, theme or other similar elements.

29.
Minimalism
• Some of the works of Malevich and Duchamp
of the 1920 are considered as minimalist.
• The most famous artists of this movement are
American:
– Dan Flavin,
– Carl Andre,
– Ellsworth Kelly and
– Donald Judd
appeared against abstract expressionism
with their canvases of particular shape,
sculptures and installations.

30.
Minimalism
• Minimalism is also linked to other
movements:
– Conceptual art because when the work is finished
is to create a theory,
– Pop Art with its fascination for the impersonal
– and Land Art which produces simple forms.
• Minimalism was successful and influential in
the 20th century.
• Representative authors are:
– Frank Stella eta
– Ellsword Kelly .

32.
Donald Judd
• He started as a painter to
begin with low relieves in the
1960s and later to other kind of
relieves.
• Later he started doing
elements to be put in the wall
or on the floor being always
geometrical elements, without
any basis.
• The first works were made of
wood but them he started
using metal and sometimes in
colours.

33.
Dan Flavin
• He made sculptures
of neon light.
• His aim was to create
atmospheres.
• He provoked changes
of visual perception.